Chapter 25 Lia
Lia
My traitorous heart slips inside my chest as the next words claw up my throat like thorns on a rose stem.
“We’re not pack.”
Tansy doesn’t blink. “That’s not what the town is saying.”
I stare at her across the stainless-steel counter. The scent of butter and sugar hangs thick between us, threatening to smother the words trying to work their way out of my mouth.
With the last tray of Danishes done, I have nothing to distract myself away from the moment. Tansy stands there with flour dusted up and down her arms, all over the front of her apron.
“Well, then the town needs a hobby,” I finally manage to say.
Tansy’s laugh is bright and unapologetic. “Oh, honey, you’re the new girl in town. You are the hobby.”
I turn to the sink and grab a washcloth and some soap. If I can’t bake, I need to clean. My hands need something to do.
I’ve never done well in the spotlight under pressure.
It’s why the back room of a bakery suits me just fine.
“We’ve just been spending some time together. That’s all,” I say as I wring out the water from the washcloth.
“Mmm. Is that what bowling night was?”
I pause. “What?”
“Or, the sunrise lookout Knox took you to?”
I slowly turn to face her. “How do you know about that?”
Tansy’s smile is knowing. “Or the private dinner at Walker’s vineyard.”
The hair on the nape of my neck prickles. “How do you know all of this?”
She gives me a look. “This bakery is basically the town’s news station. People stand at the counter and they talk. I listen while fulfilling orders. It’s basically the first stop on the gossip train in Honeysuckle Grove. My grandmother was very proud of that fact.”
My legs feel dizzy.
Is that possible, for legs to feel dizzy?
Tansy continues as if her words aren’t knocking me off my feet. “Half the morning crowd the other day was whispering about Knox hauling a picnic basket up the east ridge before dawn. You can hear that man’s truck anywhere it goes.”
“Oh.”
“That lookout point is prime real estate this time of the year, by the way. College kids drive out here every spring for the wildflowers.”
I say the only thing I can. “It was private when we went up there.”
“Which is wild to me,” Tansy says as she comes over and takes the soapy washcloth from my hand, “because it’s usually never empty up there. Not during the springtime, anyway.”
Just the mention of that morning has memories of the cool morning air rushing over my skin. The way Knox smiled at me like I was something worth waking up for.
Tansy starts wiping down the countertops I used. “And trust me, word got around quick when Walker dismissed his staff and cleared his whole schedule for that date. You think stuff like that doesn’t get noticed around here? It’s how we entertain ourselves.”
My pulse thuds in my ears. “Ah.”
“And Eli?” she adds, almost as an afterthought. “Amber told Mrs. Lo at the school that her dad was ‘spending lots of time with his new best friend, Lia.’”
My face must be doing something because it makes Tansy’s head fall back with laughter.
“Sit, before you pass out.”
She pushes a rolling chair in my direction and I don’t hesitate. I ease myself down onto the cushion, my legs giving out at the last second. I lean forward and place my head in my hands. My elbows rest on my knees as I breathe in through my nose and let it out steadily through my mouth.
I feel a frustrated heat prickling up my spine.
“They look at you differently, you know,” Tansy says.
I wish I could pretend not to hear her. But instead, I mutter into my palms. “I’m sure they do.”
“No, seriously. I grew up with the three of them. We all ran the same streets. Attended the same school. Annoyed the same teachers.”
“And?”
“And do you want to know what they look like to me? Especially Knox, when he brought you in here with that extra pan of cinnamon rolls?”
That makes me lift my head as I give her a quizzical look.
She motions at me with the washcloth. “They look like men trying to soothe a skittish animal. Like they’re afraid they’re going to scare you off.”
The nervousness threatening to make me puke morphs into something gentler at her words. I study Tansy for a while as she cleans, trying my best to clock whether she’s lying.
“You say you grew up with them?” I ask.
She snickers. “Unfortunately. You should’ve seen Eli when he was a kid. Right troublemaker, that one was. He may look innocent enough now, but back in high school? That guy loved his pranks. Pissed everyone off with them.”
I blurt the question out before I can come up with a tactful way to say it. “Are they good men, Tansy?”
That makes her stop. She pauses, her gaze slowly gravitating to my face, and she tilts her head.
“Is that what you’re afraid of? That they’re not good Alphas?”
Does she know about my ARS? Does the town gossip about that as well? Dr. Quinn didn’t strike me as the kind of man to talk about his patient’s medical conditions out in the open like that. Should I tell her? Do I want my private information to become gossip fodder?
Might as well rip off the band-aid if I want real answers. “Well, I have ARS, so. I sort of really need to be sure they’re good men and not Alphas who just think they are.”
Tansy freezes. The only proof of her still being alive is her shoulders moving in time with her breaths. The bakery noise fades into the background as she studies me, and I feel as if I’ve been inserted underneath a microscope.
I want to cower away.
“Are you listening?” she finally asks. “I want to make sure you’re listening when I say this.”
I swallow thickly and nod.
“Good, because you need to hear this, clearly,” she says as her head cants to the side. “Walker Boone, Knox Rylan, and Eli Black are some of the best men I know.”
I chew on my lower lip. “They are?”
“Yes,” she says without hesitation before she grins. “Never would’ve clocked them for pack, that’s for sure. But that’s what happens sometimes. Sometimes the men find one another first. Sometimes their Omega brings them together. But either way, when it clicks? It clicks.”
“And… the town thinks we’ve clicked?”
She snickers. “You don’t?”
“I don’t really know anything anymore, to be honest.”
Her smile is kind. “You’re the spoke to their wheel, Lia. I can tell by the way they look when they talk about you.”
That gets my attention. “They talk about me?”
She huffs a soft laugh. “Sweetheart, this is Honeysuckle Grove. Of course they talk about you. They talk about everyone. It’s all anyone around here ever does.
” The room around me narrows as her words continue, pounding against my instincts.
“Knox can’t say your name without smiling, for instance.
He comes in every morning for his regular order: black coffee with a splash of mocha, though he’s added a cinnamon roll to his routine as of late. ”
That makes me blush.
“And then there’s Eli,” she continues, “who gets this soft look like he’s already picturing you at his kitchen table every time he brings Amber in to get a slice of cake.”
“What’s her go-to cake?”
Tansy smiles with pride. “My spice cake. It was a favorite of mine growing up. I make sure to always have a fresh one baked just in case she comes in for it. And don’t get me started on Walker.”
“Why?”
“Walker doesn’t talk much, as I’m sure you’ve already come to find out. But when he comes in here for his afternoon tea if he’s making deliveries, he looks like a man who finally sees something he wants and is terrified of losing it again.”
My mind flashes to Rachel and everything he told me about what happened between the two of them. The scars she left behind that still flicker behind his eyes. The way he recluses into his work, like he’s trying to burrow away from feelings he doesn’t want to acknowledge.
My poor Walker. He only wants to be chosen.
My eyes burn and I have to blink the sensation away.
“Lia, they’re head over heels for you,” Tansy says, “but they’re not pushing. Doesn’t that tell you enough?”
I continue blinking as I stand from the rolling chair and search for something to do. I’m trying to blink back tears, but they aren’t staying at bay. I feel them welling in my eyes, threatening to spill over and spoil everything.
“So,” Tansy says when I don’t respond, “the only question is: what’s holding you back?”
My voice wobbles as I check the oven, even though I know it’s off and there’s nothing inside. I just need something to do. “Would you be offended if there was another bakery in town someday?”
The question hangs there between us as I tidy up a space that isn’t disorganized to begin with. I wish she’d give me another task to do. Another recipe to bake. I’m better at these kinds of things when my body’s distracted from the swirling thoughts of my mind.
Heat creeps up the nape of my neck. Sweat threatens to bead along my brow.
I need a nap.
“Lia, look at me,” Tansy says.
I toss the rag down onto the countertop before turning to face her. “Yeah?”
She steps forward, placing her floured hands on my shoulders, and squeezes them softly. Tansy’s one of those people that makes you feel like you’ve known her much longer than just the morning rush. It’s like I’m talking to a friend, or even a sister.
Her eyes are kind when she speaks. “I’d be thrilled to have another bakery in the area. It would take some of the pressure off this place, because there’s always orders I can’t fulfill. Plus, it would give me time to work on my own creations.”
I furrow my brow. “These recipes you do aren’t yours?”
“Nope,” she says as she moves to my side and slings her arm around my shoulders. “They’re my grandmother’s, passed down from her mother, and her mother’s mother. I’m proud to upkeep them, but I’d love to put my own spin on things and have them displayed and sold here.”
“But you don’t have that kind of time.”
She shrugs and looks at me. “The only other place that sells anything sort of sweet outside of the grocery store is the diner. Anything specialized comes to me. So I’m either fulfilling other people’s creation dreams or continuing tradition.
I don’t have time to formulate my own stuff.
Having another bakery in town would give me some of my time back to do that kind of stuff. ”
I nod slowly. “You could sell some of your stuff there, I could sell some stuff here.”
“Exactly,” Tansy says with a smile as she moves back in front of me. “Now you’re getting it. You help me, and I help you. That’s the beauty of having competition. Sometimes, you just don’t need to be competition at all.”
The pressure building in my chest cracks open, spilling out something so close to hope that I don’t dare name it. Community and support.
It’s something I’ve been lacking my entire adult life. I’ve been stumbling around in the dark, trying to piece together some semblance of a life for myself with no direction, no guardrails, and no guarantees.
Tansy makes this place sound almost like a guarantee.
It brings me a great deal of comfort.
A bell jingles in the distance before laughter fills the front of the bakery.
Tears cling to my lashes as my throat works around the knot building inside of it.
I clear my throat and swallow, trying to work it back down into my stomach.
Trying to piece myself together in order to be presentable again.
“I’ll go see who that is,” Tansy says as she unravels her arm from my shoulders. “You can head out when you’re done cleaning up back here.”
The words are out of my mouth in seconds. “Call me anytime you need help.”
Tansy grins at me over her shoulder. “Does that mean you’re staying in the area?”
“For now, yes.”
She wipes her hands off on her apron and nods. “I’ll call the next time I need help. Just promise me something.”
“What’s that?”
“Promise me you’ll think about choosing them. They could be really good for you, if you let them. There are a lot of Omegas in town that would kill for the chance to be with Alphas like them. You can’t do any better than those three.”
Her words pierce my chest like a bullet as she disappears into the front of the bakery.
I grab a rag and some cleaning solution from beneath the sink and spray down all of the surfaces I used.
What Tansy said rattles around in my head with every stroke of the cloth against the stainless steel surfaces, and it makes me realize something.
Walker, Eli, and Knox have chosen me. Not out of obligation. Not out of pity. But because of a distinct thread sewing in and out of all of us. They’re choosing me in the same way they wish to be chosen: wholeheartedly and without regret.
They’re just waiting for me to choose them back.
“Oh, and by the way?” Tansy asks as she sticks her head through the doorway. “Your cherry-rhubarb cinnamon rolls were a hit. You got any more of those I can sell around here?”